A few people were saying the latest AWP book fair was too big, too spread out. But self doesn’t see it getting any smaller. And okay, she probably only saw 1/10 of the publishers who were there. But, still, fun times!

Okay, so Chris Hemsworth was NOT actually at the AWP Bookfair in Los Angeles, earlier this month. But, please, why would self ever shy away from including a fabulous hunk of eye candy like Chris? Are you crazes? He was on the cover of Angeleno magazine!

She loves the writing. They publish poetry (beautiful poetry) and a kind of prose self considers “TransGenre.” Fits right up her alley. Ever since self heard the word “TransGenre,” a few years back (Hotel Amerika featured her piece “Ghosts” in their TransGenre issue, and gave a name to the kind of short short stuff self had just begun writing), she loves the word. TransGenre: not sure if you need to capitalize the “G.”

Which reminds her: She has to look and see if Hotel Amerika is at the AWP Book Fair!

She didn’t know anything about the editor, Ian Chung, until he sent her a message yesterday, saying the two pieces he’d accepted for the review were going live this week.

That’s when she decided to google him and found out that he edits the review from Singapore!

She wants to make sure she puts this announcement in before heading to the craziness of the AWP annual conference, this year being held in Seattle.

Self’s head is about to explode. She got a message from PANK late last night, and then just remembered she hadn’t yet submitted her signed author contract to Philippine Speculative Fiction vol. 9, and it’s due Mar. 1.

Panic attack! Nice panic attack, though.

This morning, she decided that the best thing for her to calm down would be to take a yoga class, and lo and behold, she got to Peacebank in downtown Redwood City, five minutes early, but after she checked in, there was no space. Wall to wall yoga mats, and no one wanted to budge even a few inches to give her a chance to squeeze in. Stone-faced, all!

The two people manning the check-in desk looked so impatient when self said there was no space. They said, maybe you can ask someone to move? Are you kidding? Did you see the grim-faced visage of everyone in the class when they saw self stumble in, clue-less and panting?

Actually, he has two. The first is called “All Aboard,” and the second is called “Six Secrets.”

(Self apologizes in advance to dear blog readers: both pieces are written with very long lines, so that the poems appear sideways, but she can’t figure out how to use landscape format in this post.)

She’s including a picture she took earlier this year, in March, when she was in the Philippines.

Without further ado, here’s the first verse of the first D. A. Powell poem:

ALL ABOARD

Almost anything that can happen can happen on water. Think how long Odysseus sailed in order to get home.

Or at least remember the number of times you’re told it. How, naturally, you resist the end. The wind

Sunrise, Bantayan Beach, Dumaguete

(And why should self put the whole poem here? She wants dear blog readers to order an issue.)

Self would like to thank Powell for something he said to her many years ago, during a conversation he probably doesn’t even remember. We had visited Claudia McIsaac’s creative writing class in Santa Clara. Self read “Ghosts,” a piece she’d just finished writing a few days earlier. Afterwards, self and Powell had lunch in Higuma in Redwood City. Powell told her, completely unbidden (Come on, it’s not as if self would ever have had the courage to ask: “So, umm, what did you think of that piece I just read???”) “I really liked your piece.”

So self sent it out and sent it out and never stopped sending it out and finally, after two years, it got picked up by Hotel Amerika and was listed as TransGenre, her first TransGenre piece. Ever. Drew says he’d like to set it to music someday.